where I talk with my inside voice
We drove down to Jackson, MO, to witness our second total solar eclipse, and it did not disappoint. I think we all agreed we liked this one better than the one in 2017. Not only did it last longer, but the shadow was darker and the colors were even more surreal. Plus, we got to see some looping prominences that...
As a birthday surprise for Josie this year, I’ve been working on my first MOC (in Lego lingo that’s My Own Creation). It’s a Lego model that I designed in Studio (what used to be called Lego Designer many years ago) and then ordered the parts to build it. It took a lot more time than I was expecting, but...
We took advantage of the nice weather today and went to the Minifig Shop, had lunch at Dewey’s Pizza, and then spent the afternoon at the zoo. I’m not going to have too many more opportunities like this. Have to grab them while I can.
Dixie bought this heated birdbath a few years ago, so the birds would have a place in the winter to drink and bathe. This was our first visit by Missouri’s state bird.
The SLSO is temporarily performing out of the Stifel Theater downtown while Powell Hall is being renovated, but we maintained our annual tradition to see their Christmas Concert. This year included a couple of notable pieces – Charleston Christmas (Stephenson) and Tom Lehrer’s Hannukah in Santa Monica!
Josie took the written test today and passed on her first try! Time to start practicing and logging her 40 hours behind the wheel. I’m proud of my little girl.
As per usual, we hosted the family for Thanksgiving, although the crowd wasn’t as big as some years because Laura didn’t come in town, we still had a good time and plenty of Dixie’s great food!
Well, it’s not exactly new. It’s been my workshop since we moved into this house in 2006, but for the last three years (since we sold the house in Illinois), it’s been so full of junk that I couldn’t even walk in there. So I’ve spent the last couple of months cleaning it up, selling stuff on Craigslist, dumping stuff...
I was happy to see that the kids enjoyed last year’s homecoming enough to repeat the experience this year. They had more of their friends attend this year, so they really had fun. I guess next year we’ll be going to Mizzou’s homecoming. I’m looking forward to that.
Tonight we celebrated Noah earning the rank of Eagle Scout, and (since he’ll age out next week) his entire Scouting career with the retrospective video below. We rented the lodge at Beaumont and had quite a few guests attend, many of whom had great things to say about our young man. Needless to say, we’re very proud of him.
After 27 years at Boeing, I finally got an opportunity to travel to the company’s heritage site of Seattle, Washington. We recently reorganized and our team is now part of an enterprise group that does modeling and simulation. This was a summit meeting of the new management team and despite a couple of long days, we still had a bit...
My goddaughter Abby Zyk got married at the St. Louis Basilica. It was a beautiful ceremony and a great reception at Twisted Tree. We are grateful for being a part of their special day and we wish her and Joe all the happiness in the world.
The musical Jesus Christ Superstar is currently touring to celebrate its 50th anniversary and it made a stop at the Fox, so I took the kids to see it. They really liked it, and now I’m hearing the songs coming out of Alexa.
As part of art this year, I signed us all up for a six-week pottery class at Lamplight Studio in Overland. We had a good time learning to throw pots on the wheel as well as hand-building some other creations. The kids had fun and now we have a bunch of candy dishes that need to be filled up with...
Noah ran his first half-marathon today after several weeks of training. He finished in two hours, twenty-two minutes. He was pretty wiped out at the end – tired and hungry. But we’re proud of him for challenging himself and finishing!
Josie’s rock-climbing class just happened to be on her birthday this week, so I went along to get some photos of her bouldering. She’s really enjoying this hobby, and getting better every week.
